For those who haven't come across VRED before, it follows a workflow typical to almost every 3D rendering system out there, but with some added features that aren't so widely available.

VRED is interesting, because it manages to combine the ease of use seen in progressive rendering systems such as KeyShot, with the greater control that you'll see in a system like 3ds Max, Maya or Modo.

Multiple webengines can now be selected in the media editor tree with ctrl-left mouse. Once selected, you can right click to duplicate, delete, switch on or off, or toggle.Click Through has been added to the Media Editor. This feature evaluates transparency for interaction, allowing click through of geometry containing transparent media.Now in the Media Editor, you can select only the webengines to be rendered when Render All is selected from the bottom icon bar. HTML playback is disabled for unselected webengines.The Media Editor now contains a search field for the WebEngine tree.

AnnotationsPreferences have been added for annotation properties. For more information, see Annotation Preferences.Use Node Visibility has been added for annotations. The visible state of the node that the annotation is associated with is used for the visibility of the annotation. If the node is invisible, so is the annotation.When merging a vpb file that contains annotations, you can now select Import Annotations from the Merge Project Options dialog.Annotations are now individually selectable. You can show, hide, color, size, and scale one or more annotations. For more information, see To Use Annotations.

Scripting ImprovementsThe Vive Tracker is now supported in VRED.Oculus Touch Controllers are now supported in VRED.We added an environment variable for custom script plug-in loading. You can set a version-dependent environment variable VRED%YEAR%_%UPDATE%_SCRIPT_PLUGINS. For example, VRED2018_2_SCRIPT_PLUGINS=C:\Plugins;D:\Plugins. This variable looks for script plug-ins for VRED version 2018 Update 2 in C:\Plugins and D:\Plugins.

Rendering ImprovementsWe improved displacement mapping with the new Displacement Offset feature. Displacement Offset allows you to set the value of the zero plane in the texture. Values below the zero plane displace inside the geometry and values above the zero plane displace outside the geometry.

FileIO ImprovementsMeta Data can now be embedded with EXR renderings.When adding a VRED file to an existing scene, you can now merge materials. In the Merge Options Dialog, select Merge Materials to eliminate any duplication of identical materials.

Material Editor ImprovementsLDR (.png and .jpg) file formats can now be loaded to a spherical environment material.When assigning a texture to a material and using planar projection, the texture defaults to infinite projection depth. The texture is therefore projected onto the entire object. You can now restrict the texture to one side of the object by limiting the range of the projection. Changing the Z value of the projection size from zero (infinite) to another value achieves the restriction. To further adjust the placement of the texture, select the Manipulate feature. Hold the Shift key and drag on the manipulator to rotate, scale, or translate the texture. Dragging the blue scale control adjusts the depth limit of the texture. For a texture that is dragged and dropped as a decal, the default for the Z value of the projection size is two hundred. Having a value other than zero, ensures that the decal only appears on one side of the object.Shadows and Illumination is a new feature in the Material Editor for Environments. Now you can cast shadows from environment light sources in OpenGL and precomputed raytracing modes. For more information, see Skylight and Sphere Environment.

General ImprovementsShowcase files are not supported in VRED 2018 and beyond. You can open a Showcase file in a version of VRED before 2018, save the file (vpb), and open in VRED 2018.When creating a Layout with no User License or Sign-In feature and setting this Layout as the default, the sign-in feature still appears once when restarting VRED. There are two environment variables for this: VRED_DISABLE_CLIC_IPM hides the Clic UI and VRED_DISABLE_CLIC_USER_LICENSE which disables the entire user licensing system.ACES Camera Response Curve 1.0 and 0.7 tonemapping are now supported in the image processing tab of the camera editor. The two ACES versions handle colors slightly different, especially with high values. ACES 1.0 has a filmic color shift, for example, red glowing objects shift to yellow. ACES 0.7 has a digital look, where red glowing objects shift to white. Uses sensor response behavior as defined in the Academy Color Encoding System.NURBS raytracing performance is improved by approximately 10%.The obsolete python modules, vrParticle, and vrWater, have been removed.Multilayer EXR files can now be imported with meta data included. Luminance EXR files can also be imported and exported.You can now copy and paste between instances of VRED. With two or more sessions of VRED open, copy nodes from one scenegraph and select a node in another scenegraph and paste. The Paste dialog opens with options. To learn more about these options, see Copy and Paste in Preferences.